emeralds I've ever seen or dreamed of. Each of them is really too large to possess fair carat value. They should be crown jewels or nothing.'
'But a couple of emeralds and a couple of rubies, no matter what size, should not constitute the totality of the Maya treasure,' Henry contended. 'We're across the threshold of it, and yet we lack the key-'
'Which the old Maya, back on the barking sands, undoubtedly holds in that sacred tassel of his,' Leoncia said. 'Except for these two statues and the bones on the floor, the place is bare.'
As she spoke, she advanced to look the male statue over more closely. The grotesque ear centered her attention, and she pointed into it as she added: 'I don't know about the key, but there is the key — hole.'
True enough, the elephantine ear, instead of enfolding an orifice as an ear of such size should, was completely blocked up save for a small aperture that not too remotely resembled a key-hole. They wandered vainly about the chamber, tapping the walls and floor, seeking for cunninglyhidden passageways or unguessable clues to the hiding place of the treasure.
'Bones of tierra caliente men, two idols, two emeralds of enormous size, two rubies ditto, and ourselves, are all the place contains,' Francis summed up. 'Only a couple of things remain for us to do: go back and bring up Kicardo and the mules to make camp outside; and bring up the old gentleman and his sacred knots if we have to carry him.'
'You wait with Leoncia, and I'll go back and bring them up,' Henry volunteered, when they had threaded the long passages and the avenues of the erect dead and won to the sunshine and the sky outside the face of the cliff.
Back on the barking sands the peon and his father knelt in the circle so noisily drawn by the old man's forefinger. A local rain squall beat upon them, and, though the peon shivered, the old man prayed on oblivious to what might happen to his skin in the way of wind and water. It was because the peon shivered and was uncomfortable that he observed two things which his father missed. First, he saw Alvarez Torres and Jos6 Mancheno cautiously venture out from the jungle upon the sand. Next, he saw a miracle. The miracle was that the pair of them trudged steadily across the sand without causing the slightest sound to arise from their progress. When they had disappeared ahead, he touched his finger tentatively to the sand, and aroused no ghostly whisperings. He thrust his finger into the sand, yet all was silent, as was it silent when he buffeted the sand heartily with the flat of his palm. The passing shower had rendered the sand dumb.
He shook his father out of his prayers, announcing:
'The sand no longer is noisy. It is as silent as the grave. And I have seen the enemy of the rich Gringo pass across the sand without sound. He is not devoid of sin, this Alvarez Torres, yet did the sand make no sound. The sand has died. The voice of the sand is not. Where the sinful may walk, you and I, old father, may walk.'
Inside the circle, the old Maya, with trembling forefinger in the sand, traced further cabalistic characters; and the sand did not shout back at him. Outside the circle it was the same because the sand had become wet, and because it was the way of the sand to be vocal only when it was bone-dry under the sun. He fingered the knots of the sacred writing tassel.
'It says,' he reported, 'that when the sand no longer talks it is safe to proceed. So far I have obeyed all instruction. In order to obey further instruction, let us now proceed.'
So well did they proceed, that, shortly beyond the barking sands, they overtook Torres and Mancheno, which worthy pair slunk off into the brush on one side, watched the priest and his son go by, and took up their trail well in the rear. While Henry, taking a short cut, missed both couples of men.
CHAPTER XV
'EVEN so, it was a mistake and a weakness on my part to remain in Panama,' Francis was saying to Leoncia, as they sat side by side on the rocks outside the cave entrance, waiting Henry's return.
'Does the stock market of New York then mean so much to you?' Leoncia coquettishly teased; yet only part of it was coquetry, the major portion of it being temporization. She was afraid of being alone with this man whom she loved so astoundingly and terribly.
Francis was impatient.
'I am ever a straight talker, Leoncia. I say what I mean, in the directest, shortest way-'
'Wherein you differ from us Spaniards,' she interpolated, 'who must garnish and dress the simplest thoughts with all decorations of speech.'
But he continued undeterred what he had started to say.
'There you are a baffler, Leoncia, which was just what I was going to call you. I speak straight talk and true talk, which is a man's way. You baffle in speech, and flutter like a butterfly which, I grant, is a woman's way and to be expected. Nevertheless, it is not fair … to me. I tell you straight out the heart of me, and you understand. You do not tell me your heart. You flutter and baffle, and I do not understand. Therefore, you have me at a disadvantage. You know I love you. I have told you plainly. I? What do I know about you?'
With downcast eyes and rising color in her cheeks, she sat silent, unable to reply.
'You see!' he insisted. 'You do not answer. You look warmer and more beautiful and desirable than ever, more enticing, in short; and yet you baffle me and tell me nothing of your heart or intention. Is it because you are woman? Or because you are Spanish?'
She felt herself stirred profoundly. Beyond herself, yet in cool control of herself, she raised her eyes and looked steadily in his as steadily she said:
'I can be Anglo-Saxon, or English, or American, or whatever you choose to name the ability to look things squarely in the face and to talk squarely into the face of things.' She paused and debated coolly with herself, and coolly resumed. 'You complain that while you have told me that you love me, I have not told you whether or not I love you. I shall settle that forever and now. I do love you-'
She thrust his eager arms away from her.
'Wait!' she commanded. 'Who is the woman now? Or the Spaniard? I had not finished. I love you. I am proud that I love you. Yet there is more. You have asked me for my heart and intention. I have told you part of the one. I now tell you all of the other: I intend to marry Henry.'
Such Anglo-Saxon directness left Francis breathless.
'In heaven's name, why?' was all he could utter.
'Because I love Henry,' she answered, her eyes still unshrinkingly on his.
'And you… you say you love me?' he quavered.
'And I love you, too. I love both of you. I am a good woman, at least I always used to think so. I still think so, though my reason tells me that I cannot love two men at the same time and be a good woman. I don't care about that. If I am bad, it is I, and I cannot help myself for being what I was born to be.'
She paused and waited, but her lover was still speechless.
'And who's the Anglo-Saxon now?' she queried, with a slight smile, half of bravery, half of amusement at the dumbness of consternation her words had produced in him. 'I have told you, without baffling, without fluttering, my full heart and my full intention.'
'But you can't!' he protested wildly. 'You can't love me and marry Henry.'
'Perhaps you have not understood,' she chided gravely. 'I intend to marry Henry. I love you. I love Henry. But I cannot marry both of you. The law will not permit. Therefore I shall marry only one of you. It is my intention that that one be Henry.'
'Then why, why,' he demanded, 'did you persuade me into remaining?'
'Because I loved you. I have already so told you.'
'If you keep this up I shall go mad!' he cried.
'I have felt like going mad over it myself many times,' she assured him. 'If you think it is easy for me thus to play the Anglo-Saxon, you are mistaken. But no Anglo— Saxon, not even you whom I love so dearly, can hold me in contempt because I hide the shameful secrets of the impulses of my being. Less shameful I find it, for me to tell them, right out in meeting, to you. If this be Anglo-Saxon, make the most of it. If it be Spanish, and woman, and Solano, still make the most of it, for I am Spanish, and woman a Spanish woman of the Solanos-'
'But I don't talk with my hands,' she added with a wan smile in the silence that fell.
